Settlement Agreement Negotiation
If you are reading this page, you already know what a settlement agreement is and want to know if you can secure one for yourself. You will be in one of two situations:
- You have a settlement agreement and wish to negotiate the financial elements; or,
- You do not have a settlement agreement but wish to engage with your employer to secure financial compensation in return for leaving your employment.
In either scenario, our primary advice is to contact us. If you have a settlement agreement, a highly experienced partner can advise you for free on the chances of successfully negotiating an increase in the value of that settlement agreement, so just contact us. If you do not have a settlement agreement, provide us with some information when prompted as to why you want to leave and what claims you think you have against your employer, and if we think we can help you, we will be in contact to offer you a free initial consultation.
Our partners have been negotiating settlement agreements for decades and are able to give you the best possible advice to maximise the financial compensation, or damages, when leaving employment. Speaking to a solicitor is always more advantageous than piecing together patches of information from any website, even our own, as our advice is specific to your exact circumstances.
If you have been invited to a Protected Conversation meeting, please contact us immediately and you will be prioritised for a free initial consultation before your meeting.
You Already Have a Settlement Agreement
If you already have been offered settlement agreement, your first thought, after the initial shock, will be “Is this a fair level of compensation for terminating my employment?” The answer to that question is, of course, complicated and based on many factors, including your salary, your particular situation, whether you have potential claims against your employer, the industry in which you work, your seniority and so forth. The truth is that there is no box-ticking algorithm that can provide you with precise calculation as to what you can expect to receive. The only way you can obtain an idea as to whether your settlement agreement offer is fair, is for our partners to speak to you, understand your situation, and provide you with bespoke initial advice. We can do this for free in the initial consultation.
Negotiating a Settlement Agreement Offer
It is ordinarily preferable to negotiate a settlement agreement when your employer has made the first move and offered you one already. This is because they have already given away their position, which is that they want you to leave. In all but a few cases, there will usually be room for us to negotiate with your employer to increase the value of your settlement agreement. How much depends on your circumstances, but our partners have increased the value of settlement agreements by as much as several hundreds of thousands of pounds from the employer’s initial offer.
How we negotiate will depend upon your situation. Sometimes, direct negotiations with your employer or their solicitors, are the best way to achieve the results you want. This may be done by letter or telephone calls. Sometimes, it is appropriate advise you “behind the scenes”, drafting grievance letters for you and advising you on e-mails and meeting strategies, until the appropriate moment, at which point we intervene directly with your employer. Our strategy will always be devised between us and agreed by you and is solely designed to achieve your desired result.
Very rarely will we advise you that it will be necessary to start proceedings in the Employment Tribunal, but in some, rare cases it is advisable to do this to place pressure on your employer to settle. For more information regarding this, please see our information on Employment Tribunals.
Our partners will give you an initial view as to the amount you should be able to expect to increase your settlement offer by. They will then offer you funding options which will almost always include the option of our fees being paid as a percentage of any increase in the value of the settlement agreement we manage to achieve for you.
For example:
If you come to us with a settlement agreement containing the following heads:
- Three Months’ Notice Pay – £21,000
- Holiday Pay – £7,124
- Vested Shares – £24,000
- Termination Payment £15,000
And we determine that the Notice Pay, Holiday Pay and Share Options are calculated correctly, we will advise negotiation in respect of the Termination Payment. If there are no immediate claims available to you, and we estimate a quick negotiation would yield a Termination Payment of £30,000, and we make you an offer of 15% of the value of the increase we negotiate for you, we will take as our fee £2,250 plus VAT, payable when your employer pays your settlement sums to you.
You Do not Have a Settlement Agreement, but want to Negotiate One
Your chances of successfully negotiating a settlement agreement if your employer has not made you an offer to terminate your employment will depend upon the strength of any claims you may have, or the likelihood of your employer agreeing to you leaving your job. For example, if your employer has commenced a performance improvement procedure (PIP) with you, or you believe you are being forced out due to your employer’s treatment of you, it is likely that your employer may be amenable to making you an offer to terminate your employment. Likewise, if you have legitimate claims against your employer and want to leave your job, your employer will likely wish to settle those claims by paying you sums of money, and you agreeing to terminate your employment.
